The following, though a bit long, is my considered view on religions. We have let politicians to divide and rule on the basis of religions with vote bank in mind. This is what I wrote in my e-book "Success through Opposites" and I quote: " Religion vs. Religion: Let us see what we do with religions: Ingrained right from the childhood in our mind is the recording that "our" religion is the best. No wonder we all grow up thinking one religion is okay and the other is not. There are so many common aspects between religions and there are a few differences - that is why they are different religions! Therefore, no two religions are exactly opposite, so to say, because of the very many common values they preach. Even if no two religions are exactly opposites, we have made ourselves and other people feel that they are! If we are comfortable with one religion and any other also, there will be nothing like one is right and the other not so right, there will be no attempt to think that we have to "serve" or "defend" "our" religion. There won't be attempts at converting people from one to the other and "serving" the religion that way. So we "serve" or "defend" our respective religions vigorously, think only our religion is the "best" and end up as fundamentalists - either of a rather soft type or a violent one. By our uncontrolled, no-brake, staunchness for one religion, we are responsible for triggering the creation of the opposite: 1. Our no-brake conversion into our religion, beyond threshold, has created exactly the opposite of what we wanted to achieve and several governments are thinking of enacting a law against conversions from one religion to any other. 2. This has also created fundamentalists in the other religions either of a soft type or a violent one. Then we blame a particular religion itself as being fundamentalist! Yes, if the people in charge of interpretation have interpreted one aspect of a religion with a lot of motive energy and no adequate brake energy, that interpretation regarding that aspect of that religion becomes cancerous. This does not mean that the whole religion in question is cancerous but only the interpretation is. Such interpretations come from minds that are comfortable with only one religion. If we are comfortable with one religion and any other, we will adopt what ever any religion has to say at a suitable occasion automatically and make our lives comfortable and happy. Also, we forget that religions were created by human beings - or by Super human beings-as basically "way of life" for human beings, with the idea of making life of the people at large comfortable and happy. But our addiction to one and aversion or hate for the other has led to a situation where religion is being used as the cause for massacring thousands of innocent men, women and even children! Suicide squads are formed, trained and operated, ostensibly to help sustain or "defend" a religion. We are led to believe as though the religion will die if people, including children, do not die for the religion! Alternatively, we believe that unless we keep adding more and more numbers of people to our religion, our religion will get weaker and decay. So we keep converting thousands of innocent men, women and even children. This method is not exactly like that of a suicide squad that is using physical methods, but the softer version playing on the emotions of people-doing the same job. The followers of this method operate like multinational business organizations - having a target for the number to be converted around the world and exercising control over and monitoring the numbers through regular MIS (Management information system). The emotional blackmail used for conversion is as insidious as the physical force method. Instead of religion helping men, men profess to help survive or "defend" religions. If any religion needs the support of men instead of being of support to men, that religion is anyway on its decline, irrespective of its proponents' claim or its current membership! The worst thing, an unpardonable sin, that one can do is to tinker around with minds of people - particularly children' s minds in their very formative years-by bringing them to our way of thinking - which we may honestly feel is the only right way. Upon deeper examination, we will find the only right way as per our thinking is at best either cancerous or retarded - only because our mind is not comfortable with any other way This is particularly true of the thinking about religions that most of us have today and the way we perpetuate our view among future generations. I am sure by now that many who would have agreed largely with whatever I have written up to now, before I took up religion, would have started feeling somewhat or terribly uncomfortable. But both the basis of whatever I have said up to now and what I am saying about religions are based on the same principle of opposites - an energy law that is inviolable. When the mind is liberated from is liberated from the clutches of only one religion and is comfortable and happy with all, what a great mind it becomes! Truly such people are genuinely happy and they also spread happiness all around them - in the family, the society and the whole world. Compare this with the misery that is spread by the soft and hard options of forcing people to follow one or the other religion or ism. There has been a recent development and that is to create a new 'universal religion' as a solution to the problem created by several religions. But eventually, the children of these families will grow up thinking that this universal religion is the best and all others are not okay! So the solution is not creating yet another religion, as we have too many already. The solution is injecting the requisite opposite in our mind: I would even suggest that we follow the religion we dislike until we get comfortable with the religion we dislike too, and from then on we will be fine. Even the punishment for forcing people to follow one particular religion, either through soft or through hard methods, may be meted out in a commune in which these very people follow for a period of time the daily religious practices of the religion they were revolting against. Any religion is meant to be and is a tool in man's hands and not the other way around. Human beings are not born to be slaves - even to any religion - but born to be masters, even over religions. Let us not make another powerful tool, created and meant to make our lives happy and comfortable, the religion, a master over us."
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